The Blue Place

by Nicola Griffith

  the blue place

  nicola griffith

  for kelley, my pearl

  CONTENTS

  one

  An April night in Atlanta between thunderstorms: dark and warm…

  two

  There used to be several distinct kinds of gym. When…

  three

  I don’t like being surprised, especially by my own behaviour,…

  four

  I wore a light linen suit. It was going to…

  five

  It was one of those Atlanta mornings when you step…

  six

  I woke at seven but slid back into the warm…

  seven

  I was up early and waiting for the paper the…

  eight

  Some wield money like a blunt instrument, bludgeoning their way…

  nine

  It was only a mile and a half from the…

  ten

  We were packed and eating our second breakfast, this time…

  eleven

  The boat was old—Hjørdis had said she remembered the same…

  twelve

  The stave church of Urnes, the oldest in Norway, lies…

  thirteen

  As they are heated, most molecules become less dense and…

  fourteen

  I drove like a berserker up the track to the…

  fifteen

  She stayed alive until the ambulance arrived. I had to…

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  I would like to thank Jan Berg, Eddie Hall, Holly Wade Matter, Mark Tiedemann, Cindy Ward, and my editors, Jennifer Hershey and Charlotte Abbott, who each in their own way helped make this a better book; my agent, Shawna McCarthy; and Dave Slusher, webmaster extraordinaire.

  one

  An April night in Atlanta between thunderstorms: dark and warm and wet, sidewalks shiny with rain and slick with torn leaves and fallen azalea blossoms. Nearly midnight. I had been walking for over an hour, covering four or five miles. I wasn’t tired. I wasn’t sleepy.

  You would think that my bad dreams would be of the first man I had killed, thirteen years ago. Or if not him, then maybe the teenager who had burned to death in front of me because I was too slow to get the man with the match. But no, when I turn out the lights at ten o’clock and can’t keep still, can’t even bear to sit down in my Lake Claire house, it’s because I see again the first body I hadn’t killed.

  I was twenty-one, a rookie in a uniform so new it still smelled of harsh chemical dyes. My hat was too big. My partner and I had been called to a duplex on Lavista. It was me who opened the bathroom door.

  As soon as I saw that bathwater, I knew. Water just doesn’t get that still if the person sitting in it is alive: the pulse of blood through veins, the constant peristaltic squeeze of alimentary tract, the soft suck of breath move the liquid gently, but definitely. Not this water. It was only after I had stared, fascinated, at the dry scum on the bar of soap, only after my partner had moved me gently aside, that I noticed her mouth was open, her eyeballs a gluey blue-grey where they should have been white.

  I wake up at night seeing those eyes.

  The sidewalks around Inman Park are made from uneven hexagons, mossy and slippery even without the debris of the recent storm. I walked in the road. A pine tree among the oaks smelled of warm resin, and the steam already rising from the pavement brought with it the scents of oil and rubber and warm asphalt. I smiled. Southern cities. People often say to me, Aud, how can you stand the heat? but I love it. I love to feel the sun rub up against my pale northern skin, love its fingers reaching down into muscle and bone. I grew up with subzero fjord winds edged with spicules of ice; to breathe deep and feel damp summer heat curling into delicate bronchioles is a luxury I will never tire of. Even during the teenage years I spent in England, when my mother decided the embassy could get along without her for a week or two and we all went up to Yorkshire to stay with Lord Horley, there was that endless biting moan over the moors, the ceaseless waving of heather and gorse. The American South suits me just fine.

  Atlanta is lush. The gates and lawns and hedges I walked past were heady with the scents of trumpet honeysuckle and jasmine, the last of the pink and white dogwood blossom. By June, of course, all the small blooms would wilt in the heat, and the city’s true colours, jungle colours, would become apparent: black-striped tiger lilies, orchids, waxy magnolia blossom. By the end of August, even those would give up the ghost and the city would turn green: glossy beryl banana trees with canoe-sized leaves, jade swamp oak, and acre upon emerald acre of bermuda grass. And as the summer heat faded into the end of October, the beginning of November, the green would fade with it. In winter Atlanta became a pale black and white photograph of a city with concrete sidewalks, straw-coloured grass and bare, grey trees.

  Thunder rumbled to the southwest and lightning turned the clouds the pink of Florida grapefruits: a long, long wait until winter.

  I lengthened my stride, enjoying the metronomic thump of boot on pavement, the noisy sky, and when I took a corner wide walked smack into a woman running in the opposite direction.

  We steadied each other for a moment—long enough for me to catch the expensive scent of her dark, rain-wet hair—then stepped back. Looked at each other. About five-seven, I’d say. Slim and sleek. Face smooth with wariness: after all, I’m big; I’m told I look frightening when I want. And that made me think how fragile she was, despite the hard muscle I had felt under my hand. It would be so easy—a step, a smile, swift whirl and grab, and snap: done. I even knew how she would fall, what a tiny sound her last sigh would be, how she would fold onto the pavement. Eight seconds.

  She stepped back another pace. It was meant to look casual, but I noted the weight on her back foot, the set of her shoulders. Funny the thoughts we have at nearly midnight. I clasped my hands behind my back in an effort to appear less threatening, then nodded, stepped to one side, and walked away. All without a word spoken. As I moved past the big houses shrouded by dripping trees I fought the urge to look over my shoulder. Looking back would frighten her. I told myself there was nothing unusual about a woman walking the streets at midnight—I did it—but my hindbrain was stirring.

  Thunder rumbled again, and water sluiced down in sheets as sudden and cold as spilled milk, beating itself into a froth on the sidewalk. The air was full of water and it was getting difficult to breathe. Lightning streaked down to my left just a bit too close for comfort. I turned for home and started to jog. No sense drowning.

  The road jumped under my feet. Transformer, I thought, but then the sound hit, batting at me from both sides like huge cat’s paws. My eyes widened and promptly filled with rain. I shook my head, trying to get rid of the ringing in my ears, but the world jumped again, pavement slamming the soles of my feet, only this time the sound was as solid as a punch in the gut, and this time I recognized it—explosives. Then I was turning and running back to where I had just come from, back to the corner, towards a house unfurling in orange flame and black smoke, a brighter yellow at the center, like a gigantic tiger lily. I skidded to a halt in confusion. It’s too early for lilies….

  I stood helpless, face getting hotter and hotter. I lifted my hand to shield my eyes but it didn’t help much. I had to step back a few yards. The flames roared. People began to appear in their doorways. Blinds twitched. I did nothing. Let the neighbours look their fill; if there had been anyone in that house, they were beyond aid, and no doubt someone had called the fire department. Not that there was much point: the fire burned very neat and clean; the neighbours’ houses were safe; I doubted even that the garage would catch.

  It was far too good a torch to be the work of an amateur firebu
g who wouldn’t be able to resist sticking around to watch their work, but I looked anyway. No sign of the woman with the rain-wet hair.

  My hindbrain was beginning to stretch and snuff now, so I thought about that woman. What was it about her that put my senses on red alert? She hadn’t done this: most accelerants had very particular scents, difficult to hide, and besides, she had been running towards the house, not away.

  Sirens whooped in the distance. The police and firefighters would be all burly and adrenaline-harsh in their uniforms. They wouldn’t want me there, wouldn’t know how to act around me, and tonight I could not be bothered to put them at their ease just so they would call me Lieutenant out loud but wonder silently what I was doing wandering the streets alone at midnight.

  The flames were dying quickly, leaving dark images like shrivelling leaves on my retina. I backed into the shadows.

  I stripped off my wet clothes and sat cross-legged on the silk rug to rub my hair dry with a towel. Rain beat on the windows. Blood beat in my veins. Turning the corner wide…

  It’s a simple thing. If you walk tight around a corner, you can be surprised by anyone who is waiting on the other side. It’s like sitting with your back to the door, like chambering a round and leaving the safety off, wearing a dress that will restrict your legs, or walking with your hands in your pockets: stupid. But so many people do it. Every now and again I go into a school to teach self-defence classes to young women. I ask: How many of you know which way to look before crossing a busy street? And every single hand will go up. So then I ask: Who knows the fire drill? And most of the hands stay up. Even if I ask who knows CPR, or what to do if you smell gas, there are a lot of hands. But if I ask how many know how to walk around a corner properly—or escape a stranglehold, or find out if the man behind you really is following you—they lower their hands in confusion. Yet these are all sensible precautions. It’s just that women are taught to not think about the danger they are often in, or how to prevent it. We’re taught to feel fear, but not what to do about it.

  I’m used to people thinking I’m paranoid. I just tell them it doesn’t take any extra effort to walk around a corner properly, or sit with your back to walls in strange places, because it becomes automatic, like looking left then right then left again before crossing the road, and it could save your life. It’s saved mine more than once. I’m used to being the only one who believes that, the only one who takes these routine precautions. But that woman last night had also been taking the corner wide. And she had remembered to do it while she was in enough of a hurry to run.

  There was no trace of the rain when I woke next morning. The tree outside my bedroom window was golden green with sunshine and birds were singing blithely. I stood under the shower a long time, letting the water quench lingering thoughts about that house burning like a hot lily.

  I have a big kitchen; square, with a terra-cotta floor. French windows open onto the deck I built last year. In summer the whole thing is in shade but when the leaves are still small with spring, sunlight shivers lightly over the planking. I took my toast and tea outside and cut up an orange while a cardinal landed on the bird feeder. Someone burnt down a house practically under my nose. My curiosity was piqued, but it wasn’t my problem. My problem was to beat the morning traffic and get to the Spanish consulate in time for my nine o’clock appointment.

  I ate my breakfast and thought about the second daughter of the Spanish Cabinet minister, who was coming to Atlanta for four days next week. I hoped she didn’t want conversation. I dislike clients who try to be my friend. The Spanish hadn’t told me, yet, the reason she was visiting. I hoped it was something boring, and safe. I like excitement but only in situations I have planned and can control. I don’t like to risk my life, or anyone else’s, to protect those I don’t know and care about even less.

  I wiped my hands on a napkin, put the napkin on my plate, carried the plate and cup into the kitchen. Napkin in the laundry, dirty dishes in the dishwasher, butter in the fridge. Orderly house, orderly life. I dressed carefully. Although Philippe Cordova would have checked me out thoroughly before calling about the job and no doubt knew I didn’t need the money, it never did any harm to emphasize that fact. It saved time down the road. So I picked one of my handmade Kobayashi suits in soft grey, put gold at my ears and moussed my white-blonde hair behind my ears. Boxy European shoes. Pearl choker.

  I felt sharp, rich, very good looking. It pleases me to wear silk couture and gold and pearls. I like the way it feels on my skin, the way it fits.

  The jacket I wore last night was on a hanger in the bathroom, still drying. I transferred the leather fob of the car key to my pants pocket, the house keys to my jacket, dipped into the inside breast pocket…and found it empty. I checked again, then in all the other pockets. My wallet was gone.

  I knew it wouldn’t be on the table by the door, or on the dresser, or on the floor or behind a cushion on the couch, but I checked anyway. I caught sight of myself in the long mirror in the hall. I looked utterly calm. I strode over to the phone, dialed Cordova’s private line at the consulate. While it rang I remembered the smell of the woman’s rain-wet hair, her wary face.

  “Philippe? Aud Torvingen. How is your schedule? It looks as though I’ll be twenty or thirty minutes late.” I didn’t offer an explanation, he didn’t ask. People don’t, usually.

  I put the phone down, breathed hard through my nose. Others hate the mess of crime, and the pain, the loss and bewilderment and anger, but what I resent is the inconvenience. Driver’s license, gun permit, insurance card…I looked at the phone again but didn’t pick it up. Something told me I wouldn’t have to make all those phone calls this time, and if I was wrong, well, two more hours wouldn’t hurt.

  Whoever had my wallet had my address. When I left the house I set the alarm system.

  Outside the birds still sang, the sun still shone. Trees shivered in a light breeze, dropping clouds of pollen. The screened porch was thick with it. My maroon Saab had turned greenish gold. It looked like a small furry hill in the driveway. I backed out into the road and left the motor running while I went back up the driveway and placed a few twigs and leaves in unobvious places. I memorized the pattern of footprints and car tires in the pollen.

  The wallet was poking out from under a bush about four feet from the corner. I squatted down but didn’t touch it. It was clearly visible to anyone looking. The arson inspectors would have looked.

  I touched the leather gently with a fingertip. Dry. I leafed through it. Nothing missing. I tucked it away in my inside breast pocket and stood.

  I have a strange kind of face; people trust me. More than that, they see in my face what they want to be there. One old man I pulled from a car wreck said I had a face like a holy angel. Some think I’m the girl next door—the way she should have been if only she didn’t hang out with the wrong crowd, if she didn’t drink, if she hadn’t gotten pregnant when she was sixteen. Those I have killed have never expressed an opinion, though several did look surprised. My face is my most useful tool.

  The uniformed officer standing by the tape around the burnt-out shell was young. He had no idea who I was. Wearing any other clothes I would have smiled and pretended to rubberneck, and he would have thought I was just like him and ended up telling me things he shouldn’t have. But I was dressed for the Spanish consulate. I walked up briskly and nodded at the figure in protective gear poking about in the ashes behind a wall thirty yards away. “Who’s the fire inspector?”

  “Ma’am?”

  I smiled pleasantly. “Bertolucci or Hammer?”

  He slid his eyes sideways, unsure how to deal with this pushy civilian who was obviously more important than she seemed. Perhaps my impatience showed through. He stepped back uneasily.

  “Never mind.” I stepped to one side. “Hoi!”

  The figure in the hard hat jerked upright and scowled.

  I knew that expression. “Bertolucci?”

  “Yeah, who wants to…Torvingen?”<
br />
  “The same.”

  He took off his hat and wiped his forehead and stepped over the rubble towards me. “Been a while.”

  “Yes.” Bertolucci had never liked me; he’d never disliked me, either. He was just cautious.

  “Heard after you were kicked out you took a job in some podunk town north of here.” He waited, looked at my clothes. I said nothing. “Your name came up last night. Some woman told us you were walking around here just before show time.” He looked assessingly at the rubble. “You’d know how.”

  A compliment. It had been a beautiful job. Fast and clean. Nothing touched but the target. “I watched it burn for a while. Did it reach the garage?”

  “Funny you should ask that.” This time the assessing gaze was turned on me. He made up his mind. “Come and look at something. Mind your clothes.”

  I stepped under the tape, past a late-model Camry that took up the driveway. “I’m thinking about getting one of these,” Bertolucci said. Too massive for my taste.

  The garage was brick, unusual in Atlanta. The door was open. The walls were cluttered with the usual stuff: caked paint rollers; a rake and shovel, with red dirt still on the blade; a hose that had been badly coiled and was permanently kinked. Why were Americans so careless of things?

  The inside was unfinished: raw bricks with mortar squeezing between them like cake filling. The mortar was grey and crumbly with damp and age. Spider webs smoothed all the corners. Bags of potting compost that looked about fifteen years old were piled against one wall. There was a lazy humming over my head—some kind of hornet nest. It was an ordinary garage. I wondered what I was supposed to see.

  “When that woman came by and talked about you, Detective Nolan laughed and said, ‘Oh, Aud used to be one of us,’ and sent her away. But you know he had to have wondered.” I bet they’d all wondered. I knew my reputation. “He didn’t wonder long, though. Not after what we found in here.”